CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CELIA’S LOVERS.
The day after Mr. Clare’s visit brought Laura the expected letter from her husband, a long letter telling her his adventures at Auray.
‘So you see, dearest,’ he wrote, after he had related all that Father le Mescam had told him, ‘come what may, our position as regards my cousin Jasper’s estate is secure. Malice cannot touch us there. From the hour I knelt beside you before the altar in Hazlehurst Church, I have been your husband. That unhappy Frenchwoman was never legally my wife. Whether she wilfully deceived me, or whether she had reasons of her own for supposing Jean Kergariou to be dead, I know not. It is quite possible that she honestly believed herself to be a widow. She might have heard that Kergariou had been lost at sea. Shipwreck and death are too common among those Breton sailorswho go to the North Seas. The little seaports in Brittany are populated with widows and orphans. I am quite willing to believe that poor Zaïre thought herself free to marry. This would account for her terrible agitation when she recognised her husband’s body in the Morgue. And now, dear love, I shall but stay in Paris long enough to procure all documents necessary to prove Jean Kergariou’s death; and then I shall hasten home to comfort my sweet wife, and to face any new trouble that may arise from Edward Clare’s enmity. I feel that it is he only whom we have to fear in the future; and it will go hard if I am not equal to the struggle with so despicable a foe. The omnibus is waiting to take us to the station. God bless you, love, and reward you for your generous devotion to your unworthy husband,—John Treverton.’
This letter brought unspeakable comfort to Laura’s mind. The knowledge that her first marriage was valid was much. It was still more to know that her husband was exempted from the charge of having possessed himself of his cousin’s estate by treachery and fraud. The moral wrong in his conduct was not lessened; but he had no longer to fear the disgrace which must have attached to his resignation of the estate.
‘Dear old house, dear old home, thank God we shall never be driven from you!’ said Laura, looking round the study in which so many eventful scenes of her life had been passed, the room where she and John Treverton had first met.
While Laura was sitting by the fire with her husband’s letter in her hand, musing upon its contents, the door was suddenly flung open, and Celia rushed into the room and dropped on her knees by her friend’s chair.
‘Laura, what has come between us?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why do you shut me out of your heart? I know there is something wrong. I can see it in papa’s manner. Have I been so false a friend that you are afraid to trust me?’
The brightly earnest face was so full of warm and truthful feeling that Laura had not the heart to resent this impetuous intrusion. She had told Trimmer that she would see no one, but Celia had set Trimmer at defiance, and had insisted on coming unannounced to the study.
‘You are not false, Celia,’ Laura answered gravely, ‘but I have good reason to know that your brother is my husband’s enemy.’
‘Poor Edward,’ sighed Celia. ‘It’s very cruel of you to say such a thing, Laura. You know how devotedly he loved you, and what a blow your marriage was to him.’
‘Was it really, Celia? He did not take much trouble to avert the blow.’
‘You mean that he never proposed,’ said Celia. ‘My dear Laura, what would have been the use of his asking you to marryhim when he was without the means of keeping a wife? It is quite as much as he can do to clothe himself decently by the uttermost exertion of his genius, though he is really second only to Swinburne, as you know. He has too much of the poetic temperament to face the horrors of poverty,’ concluded Celia, quoting her brother’s own account of himself.
‘I think a few poets—and some of the first quality—have faced those horrors, Celia.’
‘Because they were obliged, dear. They were in the quagmire, and couldn’t get out; like Chatterton and Burns, and ever so many poor dears. But surely those were not of the highest order. Great poets are like Byron and Shelley. They require yachts and Italian villas, and thoroughbred horses, and Newfoundland dogs, and things,’ said Celia with conviction.
‘Well, dearest, I bear Edward no ill-will for not having proposed to me, because if he had I could have only refused him; but don’t you think there is an extremity of folly and weakness in his affecting to feel injured by my marrying some one else?’
‘It isn’t affectation,’ protested Celia. ‘It’s reality. He does feel deeply, cruelly injured by your marriage with Mr. Treverton. You can’t be angry with him, Laura, for a prejudice that results from his affection for you.’
‘I am very angry with him for his unjust and unreasonable hatred of my husband. I believe, Celia, if you knew the extent of his enmity, you too would feel indignant at such injustice.’
‘I don’t know anything, Laura, except that poor Edward is very unhappy. He mopes in his den all day, pretending to be hard at work; but I believe he sits brooding over the fire half the time—and he smokes like——I really can’t find a comparison. Locomotives are nothing to him.’
‘I am glad he is not without a conscience,’ said Laura, gloomily.
‘That means you are glad he is unhappy,’ retorted Celia, ‘for it seems to me that the chief function of conscience is to make people miserable. Conscience never stops us when we are going to do anything wrong. It only torments us afterwards. But now don’t let’s talk any more about disagreeable things. Mother told me I was to do all I could to cheer and enliven you. She is quite anxious about you, thinking you will get low-spirited while your husband is away.’
‘Life is not very bright for me without him, Celia; but I have had a cheering letter this morning, and I expect him home very soon, so I will be as hopeful as you like. Take off your hat and jacket, dear, and make up your mind to stay with me. I have been very bearish and ungrateful in shutting the door against my faithful little friend. I shall write your mother a few lines to say I am going to keep you till Saturday.’
‘You may, if you like,’ said Celia. ‘It won’t break my heart to be away from home for a day or two; though of course I fully concur with that drowsy old song about pleasures and palaces, and little dicky-birds, and all that kind of thing.’
Celia threw off her hat, and slipped herself out of her sealskin jacket as gracefully as Lamia, the serpent woman, escaped from her scaly covering. Laura rang the bell for afternoon tea. The sky was darkening outside the window, the rooks were sailing westwards with a mighty clamour, and the shadows were gathering in the corners of the room. It was that hour in a winter afternoon when the firelight is pleasantest, the hearth cosiest, and when one thinks half regretfully that the days are lengthening, and that this friendly fireside season is passing away.
The tea-table was drawn up to the hearth, and Celia poured out the tea. Laura had eaten nothing with any appetite since that fatal Sunday, but her heart was lighter this evening, and she sat back in her chair, restful and placid, sipping her tea, and enjoying the delicate home-made bread and butter. Celia was unusually quiet during the next ten minutes.
‘You say your mother gave you particular instructions about being cheerful, Celia,’ said Laura presently; ‘you are certainly not obeying her. I don’t think I ever knew you hold your tongue for ten consecutive minutes before this evening.’
‘Let’s talk,’ exclaimed Celia, jerking herself out of a reverie. ‘I’m ready.’
‘What shall we talk about?’
‘Well, if you wouldn’t object, I think I should like to talk about a young man.’
‘Celia!’
‘It sounds rather dreadful, doesn’t it?’ asked Celia naïvely; ‘but, to tell you the truth, there’s nothing else that particularly interests me just now. I’ve had a young man on my mind for the last three days.’
Laura’s face grew graver. She sat looking at the fire for a minute or so in gloomy silence.
‘Mr. Gerard, I suppose?’ she said at last.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Very easily. There are only two eligible young men in Hazlehurst, and you have told me a hundred times that you don’t care about either of them. Mr. Gerard is the only stranger who has appeared at the Vicarage. You might easily arrange that as a syllogism.’
‘Laura, do you think I am the kind of girl to marry a poor man?’ asked Celia, with sudden intensity.
‘I think it is a thing you are very likely to do; because you have always protested most vehemently that nothing could induce you to do it,’ answered Laura, smiling at her friend’s earnestness.
‘Nothing could induce me,’ said Celia.
‘Really.’
‘Except being desperately in love with a pauper.’
‘What, Celia, has it gone so far already?’
‘It has gone very far, as far as my heart. Oh, Laura, if you only knew how good he is, how bravely he has struggled, his cleverness and enthusiasm, his ardent love of his profession, you could not help admiring him. Upon my word, I think there is more genius in such a career as his than in all Edward’s poetic efforts. I feel quite sure that he will be a great man by-and-by, and that he will live in a beautiful house at the West-end, and keep a carriage and pair.’
‘Are you going to marry him on the strength of that conviction?’
‘He has not even asked me yet; though I must say he was on the brink of a declaration ever so many times when we were on the moor. We had a long walk on the moor, you know, on Monday afternoon. Edward was supposed to be with us, but somehow we were alone most of the time. He is so modest, poor fellow, and he feels his poverty so keenly. He lives in a dingy street, in a dingy part of London. He is earning about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. His lodgings cost him thirty. Quite too dreadful to contemplate, isn’t it, Laura, for a girl who is as particular as I am about collars and cuffs?’
‘Very dreadful, my pet, if one considers elegance in dress and luxurious living as the chief good in life,’ answered Laura.
‘I don’t consider them the chief good, dear, but I think the want of them must be a great evil. And yet, I assure you, when that poor young fellow and I were rambling on the moor, I felt as if money were hardly worth consideration, and that I could endure the sharpest poverty with him. I felt lifted above the pettiness of life. I suppose it was the altitude we were at, and the purity of the air. But of course that was only a moment of enthusiasm.’
‘I would not marry upon the strength of an enthusiastic moment, Celia, lest a lifelong repentance should follow. You can know so little of this Mr. Gerard. It is hardly possible you can care for him.’
‘“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”’ quoted Celia, laughing. ‘I am not quite so foolish as to love at first sight; but in three days I seemed to know Mr. Gerard as well as if we had been friends as many years.’
‘Your brother and he are intimate friends, are they not?’
‘I cannot make out the history of their friendship. Edward is disgustingly reserved about Mr. Gerard, and I don’t like to seem curious, for fear he should suppose I take too much interest in the young man.’
‘Mr. Gerard has gone back to London, has he not?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Celia. ‘He went early on Tuesday morning, by the parliamentary train. Fancy the Sir William Jenner of the future travelling by a horrid slow train, in a carriage like a cattle truck.’
‘He will be amply rewarded by-and-by, if he is really the Jenner of the future.’
‘Yes, but it’s a long time to wait,’ said Celia dolefully.
‘No doubt,’ assented Laura, ‘and the time would seem longer to the wife sitting at home by a shabby fireside.’
‘Sitting,’ echoed Celia; ‘she would never be able to sit. She would have no time for moping over the fire. She would always be dusting or sweeping, or making a pudding, or sewing on buttons.’
‘I think you had better abandon the idea,’ said Laura. ‘You could never bear a life of deprivation. Your home-nest has been too soft and comfortable. You had much better think of Mr. Sampson, who admires you very sincerely, and who has a nice house, and a good income.’
‘A nice house!’ exclaimed Celia, with unqualified contempt. ‘The quintessence of middle-class commonness. I would rather endure George Gerard’s shabby lodgings. A nice house! Oh, Laura, how can you, living in these fine old rooms, call that stucco abomination of a modern villa, those dreadful walnut-wood chairs and sofas and chiffonnier, all decorated with horrid wriggling scroll-work, badly glued on; that sticky-looking mahogany sideboard, those all-pervading crochet antimacassars——’
‘My dearest, the antimacassars are not fixtures. You could do away with them. Indeed, I dare say if Mr. Sampson thought his furniture was the only obstacle to his happiness, he would not mind refurnishing his house altogether.’
‘His furniture the only obstacle!’ echoed Celia indignantly. ‘What have you ever seen in my conduct or character, Laura, that can justify you in supposing I could marry a stumpy little man with sandy hair?’
‘In that case we will waive the marriage question altogether. You say you won’t marry Mr. Sampson, and I am sure you ought not to marry Mr. Gerard.’
‘There is no fear of my doing anything so foolish,’ Celia replied, with a resigned air. ‘He has gone back to London, and heaven knows if I shall ever see him again. But I am certain if you saw more of him, you would like him very much.’
Laura shuddered, remembering that it was by means of George Gerard that her husband had been identified with the missing Chicot. She could not have a very friendly feeling towards Mr. Gerard, knowing this, but she listened with admirable patience while Celia descanted upon the young man’s noble qualities, and repeated all he had said upon the moor, where he really seemed to have recited his entire biography for Celia’s edification.
Comforted by her husband’s letter, Laura was able to support Celia’s liveliness, and so the long winter evening wore itself away pleasantly enough. The next day was Saturday. Laura had calculated that, if things went easily with him in Paris, it would be just possible for John Treverton to be home on Saturday night. This possibility kept her in a flutter all day. It was in vain that Celia proposed a drive to Beechampton, or a walk on the moor. Laura would not go a step beyond the gardens of the Manor House. She could not be persuaded even to go as far as the orchard, for there she could not have seen the fly that brought her husband to the door, and she had an ever-present expectation of his return.
‘Don’t you know that vulgar old proverb which says that “a watched pot never boils,” Laura?’ remonstrated Miss Clare. ‘Depend upon it, your husband will never come while you are worrying yourself about him. You should try to get him out of your thoughts.’
‘I can’t,’ answered Laura. ‘All my thoughts are of him. He is a part of my mind.’
Celia sighed, and felt more sympathetic than usual. She had been thinking about George Gerard for the last four days more than seemed at all reasonable; and it occurred to her that if she were ever to be seriously in love, she might be quite as foolish as her friend.
The day wore on very slowly for both women. Laura watched the clock, and gave herself up to the study of railway time-tables, in order to calculate the probabilities as to John Treverton’s return. She sent the carriage to meet an afternoon train, and the carriage came back empty. This was a disappointment, though she argued with herself afterwards that she had not been justified in expecting her husband by that train.
An especially excellent dinner had been ordered, in the hope that the master of the house would be at home to eat it. Seven o’clock came, but no John Treverton, and so the dinner was deferred till eight; and at eight Laura would have had it kept back till nine if Celia had not protested against such cruelty.
‘I don’t suppose you asked me to stay here with the deliberate intention of starving me,’ she said, ‘but that is exactly what you are doing. I feel as if it were weeks since I had eaten anything. There is no possibility—at least so far as the railway goes—of Mr. Treverton’s being here before half-past ten; so you really may as well let me have a little food, even if you are too much in the clouds to eat your dinner.’
‘I am not in the clouds, dear, I am only anxious.’
They went into the dining-room and sat down to the table, which seemed so empty and dismal without the master of the house. The carriage was ordered to meet the last train. Celiaate an excellent dinner, talking more or less all the time. Laura was too agitated to eat anything. She was glad to get back to the drawing-room, where she could walk up and down, and lift the curtain from one of the windows every now and then to look out and listen for wheels that were not likely to be heard within an hour.
‘Laura, you are making me positively miserable,’ Celia cried at last. ‘You are as monotonous in your movements as a squirrel in his cage, and don’t seem half so happy as a squirrel. It’s a fine, dry night. We had better wrap ourselves up and walk to the gate to meet the carriage. Anything will be better than this.’
‘I should enjoy it above all things,’ said Laura.
Five minutes later they were both clad in fur jackets and hats, and were walking briskly towards the avenue.
The night was fine, and lit with wintry stars. There was no moon, but that clear sky, with its pale radiance of stars, gave quite enough light to direct the footsteps of the two girls, who knew every inch of the way.
They had not gone far before Celia, whose tongue ran on gaily, and whose eyes roamed in every direction, espied a man walking a little way in front of them.
‘A strange man,’ she cried. ‘Look, Laura! I hope he’s not a burglar!’
‘Why should he be a burglar? No doubt he is some tradesman who has been delivering goods at the kitchen door.’
‘At ten o’clock?’ cried Celia. ‘Most irregular. Why, every respectable tradesman in the village is in bed and asleep by this time.’
Laura made no further suggestion. The subject had no interest for her. She was straining her ears to catch the first sound of wheels on the frost-bound high-road. Celia quickened her pace.
‘Let’s try and overtake him,’ she said; ‘I think it’s our duty. You ought not to allow suspicious-looking strangers to hang about your grounds without at least trying to find out who they are. He may have a revolver, but I’ll risk it.’
With this heroic determination Celia went off at a run, and presently came up with the man, who was walking steadily on in front of her. At the sound of her footsteps he stopped and looked round.
‘I beg your pardon,’ gasped Celia, in a breathless condition, and looking anxiously for the expected revolver. ‘Have you been leaving anything at the Manor House?’
‘No, madam. I’ve only been making an inquiry,’ the man replied quietly.
‘It is one of John’s tenants, Celia,’ said Laura overtakingthem. ‘You have been to inquire about Mr. Treverton’s return, I suppose,’ she added, to the stranger.
‘Yes, madam. My visit is to come to an end on Monday morning, and I am getting anxious. I want to see Mr. Treverton before I go back. It will save me a journey to and fro, you see, madam, and time is money to a man in my position.’
‘I expect him home this evening,’ Laura answered kindly; ‘and if he does come to-night, as I hope he will, I have no doubt he will see you as early as you like on Monday morning. At nine, if that will not be too early for you.’
‘I thank you, madam. That will suit me admirably.’
‘Good evening,’ said Laura.
The man lifted his hat and walked away.
‘A very decent person,’ remarked Celia; ‘not a bit like the popular notion of a burglar, but perhaps not altogether unlike the real thing. A respectable appearance must be a great advantage to a criminal.’
‘There it is,’ cried Laura joyfully.
‘What?’
‘The carriage. Yes, I am sure. Yes—he is coming. Let’s run on to the gate, Celia.’
They ran as fast as a brace of school-girls, and arrived at the gate in a flutter of excitement, just in time to see the neat little brougham turn into the avenue.
‘Jack,’ cried Laura.
‘Stop,’ cried Jack, with his head out of the window, and the coachman pulled up his horses, as his master jumped out of the carriage.
‘Come out, Sampson,’ said Mr. Treverton. ‘We’ll walk to the house with the ladies.’
He put his wife’s hand through his arm and walked on, leaving Celia to Mr. Sampson’s escort.
They had much to say to each other, husband and wife, in this happy meeting. John Treverton was in high spirits, full of delight at returning to his wife, full of triumph in the thought that no one could oust him from the home they both loved.
Tom Sampson walked in the rear with Miss Clare. She was dying to question him as to where he and his client had been, and what they had been doing, but felt that to do so would be bad manners, and knew that it would be useless. So she confined herself to general remarks of a polite nature.
‘I hope you have had what the Yankees call a good time, Mr. Sampson,’ she said.
‘Very much so, thanks, Miss Clare,’ answered Sampson, recalling a dinner eaten at Véfour’s just before leaving Paris on the previous evening. ‘The kewsine is really first-class.’
If there was one word Celia hated more than another it was this last odious adjective.
‘You came by the four o’clock express from Waterloo, I suppose,’ hazarded Celia.
‘Yes, and a capital train it is!’
‘Ah!’ sighed Celia, ‘I wish I had a little more experience of trains. I stick in my native soil till I feel myself fast becoming a vegetable.’
‘No fear of that,’ exclaimed Mr. Sampson. ‘Such a girl as you—all life and spirit and cleverness—no fear of your ever assimilating to the vegetable tribe. There’s my poor sister Eliza, now, there’s a good deal of the vegetable about her. Her ideas run in such a narrow groove. I know before I go down to breakfast of a morning exactly what she’ll say to me, and I get to answer her mechanically. And at dinner again we sit opposite each other like a couple of talking automatons. It’s a dismal life, Miss Clare, for a man with any pretence to mind. If you only knew how I sometimes sigh for a more congenial companion!’
‘But I don’t know anything about it, Mr. Sampson,’ answered Celia tartly. ‘How should I?’
‘You might,’ murmured Sampson tenderly, ‘if you had as much sympathy with my ideas as I have with yours.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Celia. ‘What sympathy can there be between you and me? We haven’t an idea in common. A business man like you, with his mind wholly occupied by leases and draft agreements and wills and writs and things, and a girl who doesn’t know an iota of law.’
‘That’s just it!’ exclaimed Sampson. ‘A man in my position wants a green spot in his life—a haven from the ocean of business—an o—what’s its name—in the barren desert of legal transactions. I want a home, Miss Clare—a home!’
‘How can you say so, Mr. Sampson? I am sure you have a very comfortable house, and a model housekeeper in your sister.’
‘A young woman may be too good a housekeeper, Miss Clare,’ answered Sampson seriously. ‘My sister is a little over-conscientious in her housekeeping. In her desire to keep down expenses she sometimes cuts things a little too fine. I don’t hold with waste or extravagance—I shudder at the thought of it—but I don’t like to be asked to eat rank salt butter on a Saturday morning because the regulation amount of fresh has run out, and Eliza won’t allow another half-pound to be had in till Saturday afternoon. That’s letting a virtue merge into a vice, Miss Clare.’
‘Poor Miss Sampson. It is quite too good of her to study your purse so carefully.’
‘So it is, Miss Clare,’ answered the solicitor doubtfully, ‘but I see ribbons round Eliza’s neck, and bonnets upon Eliza’s head, that I can’t always account for satisfactorily to myself. She has a little income of her own, as you no doubt know, since everybody knows everything at Hazlehurst, and she has made her little investments in cottage property out of her little income, which, as you may also know, is derived from cottage property, and she has added a cottage here and a cottage there, till she is swelling out into a little town, as you may say—well, I should think she must have five-and-twenty tenements in all—and I sometimes ask myself how she manages to invest so much of her little income, and yet to dress so smart. There isn’t a better-dressed young lady in Hazlehurst—present company, of course, excepted—than my sister. You may have noticed the fact.’
‘I have,’ replied Celia, convulsed with inward laughter. ‘Her bonnets have been my admiration and my envy.’
‘No, Miss Clare, not your envy,’ protested Sampson, with exceeding tenderness. ‘You can envy no one. Perfection has no need to envy. It must feel its own superiority. But I was about to observe, in confidence, that I would rather the housekeeping money was spent on butter than on bonnets; and that when I feel myself deprived of any little luxury, it is a poor consolation to know that my self-denial will provide Eliza with a neck ribbon. No, my dear Miss Clare, the hour must come when my sister will have to give up the keys of her cupboards at The Laurels, and retire to a home of her own. She is amply provided for. There will be no unkindness in such a severance. You know the old proverb, “Two is company, three is none.” It doesn’t sound grammatical, but it’s very true. When I marry, Eliza will have to go.’
‘But you are not thinking of matrimony yet awhile, I hope, Mr. Sampson?’
‘Yet awhile,’ echoed Sampson; ‘I’m three-and-thirty. If I don’t take the business in hand now, Miss Clare, it will be too late. I am thinking of matrimony, and have been thinking of it very constantly for the last six months. But there is only one girl in the world that I would care to marry, and if she won’t have me I shall go down to my grave a bachelor.’
‘Don’t say that,’ cried Celia. ‘That is deciding things much too hastily. You haven’t seen all the girls in the world. How can you know anything about it? Hazlehurst is such a narrow sphere. A man might as well live in a nutshell, and call that life. You ought to travel. You ought to see the world of fashion. There are charming boarding-houses at Brighton, now, where you would meet very stylish girls. Why don’t you try Brighton?’
‘I don’t want to try Brighton, or anywhere else,’ exclaimedMr. Sampson, with a wounded air. ‘I tell you I am fixed, fixed as fate. There is only one girl in this magnificent universe I want for my wife. Celia, you must feel it, you must know it—you are that girl.’
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ cried Celia. ‘This is quite too dreadful.’
‘It is not dreadful at all. Don’t be carried away by the first shock of the thing. I may have been too sudden, perhaps. Oh, Celia, I have worshipped too long in silence, and I may, perchance’—Mr. Sampson rather dwelt on the perchance, which seemed to him a word of peculiar appropriateness, almost a lapse into poetry—‘I may, perchance, have been too sudden in my avowal. But when a man is as much in earnest as I am, he does not study details. Celia, you must not say no.’
‘But I do say no,’ protested Celia.
‘Not an irrevocable no?’
‘Yes, a most irrevocable no. I am very much flattered, of course, and I really like you very much—as we all do—because you are good and true and honest. But I never, never, never could think of you in any other character than that of a trustworthy friend.’
‘Do you really mean it?’ asked poor Sampson, aghast.
He was altogether crushed by this unexpected blow. That any young lady in Hazlehurst could refuse the honour of an alliance with him had never occurred to him as within the range of possibility. He had taken plenty of time in making up his mind upon the matrimonial question. He had been careful and deliberate, and had waited till he was thoroughly convinced that Celia Clare was precisely the kind of wife he wanted, before committing himself by a serious declaration. He had been careful that his polite attentions should not be too significant, until the final die was cast. His journey to Brittany had given him ample leisure for reflection. Prostrate in his comfortable berth on board the St. Malo steamer, in the dim light of the cabin lamp, lulled by the monotonous oscillation of the steamer, he had been able to contemplate the question of marriage from every standpoint, and this offer of to-night was the result of those meditations.
Celia told him, with all due courtesy, that she really did mean to refuse him.
‘You might do worse,’ he said, dolefully.
‘No doubt I might. Some rather vulgar person has compared matrimony to a bag of snakes, in which there is only one eel. Perhaps you are the one eel. But then you see I am not obliged to marry anybody. I can go on like Queen Elizabeth,
‘“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”’
‘“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”’
‘“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”’
‘“In maiden meditation, fancy free.”’
‘That’s not likely,’ said Mr. Sampson moodily. ‘A young lady of your stamp won’t remain single. You’re too attractive and too lively. No, you’ll marry some scamp for the sake of his good looks; and perhaps the day will come when you’ll remember this evening, and feel sorry that you rejected an honest man’s offer.’
They were at the house by this time, much to Celia’s relief, as she felt that the conversation could hardly be carried on further without unpleasantness.
She stopped in the hall, and offered her hand to her dejected admirer.
‘Shake hands, Mr. Sampson, to show that you bear no malice,’ she said. ‘Be assured I shall always like and respect you as a friend of our family.’
She did not wait for his answer, but tripped lightly upstairs, determined not to make her appearance again that evening.
Tom Sampson was inclined to return to his own house, without waiting to say good night to his client, but while he stood in the hall making up his mind on this point, John Treverton came out of the dining-room to look for him.
‘Why, Sampson, what are you doing out there?’ he cried. ‘Come in and have some supper. You haven’t eaten much since we left Paris.’
‘Much,’ echoed Sampson dismally. ‘A segment of hard biscuit on board the boat, and a cup of weak tea at Dover, have been my only sustenance. But I don’t feel that I care about supper,’ he added, surveying the table with a melancholy eye. ‘I ought to be hungry, but I’m not.’
‘Why, you seem quite low-spirited, Mr. Sampson,’ said Laura, kindly.
‘I am feeling a little low to-night, Mrs. Treverton.’
‘Nonsense, man! Low-spirited on such a night as this, after the triumph you achieved at Auray! Wasn’t it wonderful, Laura, that Sampson’s acumen should have hit upon the idea of my first marriage being invalid? It was the only chance we had—the only thing that could have saved the estate.’
‘Of course it was,’ replied Sampson, ‘and that was why I thought of it. A lawyer is bound to see every chance, however remote. I don’t know that in my own mind I thought it really likely that your first wife had been encumbered with a living husband when you married her; but I saw that it was just the one loophole for your escape from a most confounded fix.’
Cheered by the idea that he had saved his client’s fortune, and comforted by a tumbler or two of irreproachable champagne, Mr. Sampson managed to eat a very good supper, and he trudged briskly homewards on the stroke of midnight, tolerably content with himself and life in general.
‘Perhaps after all I may be better off as a bachelor than with the most fascinating of wives,’ he reflected. ‘But I must come to an understanding with Eliza. Cheeseparing is all very well as long asmycheese is not pared. I must let Eliza know that I’m master, and that my tastes are to be consulted in every particular. When I think of the melted butter they gave me last night at Veefoor’s, and the sauce with thatsole normong, I shudder at the recollection of the bill-sticker’s paste I’ve been asked to eat at my own table. If Eliza is to go on keeping house for me, there must be a revolution in the cookery.’
John Treverton and his wife spent a Sabbath of exceeding peacefulness. They appeared at church together morning and evening, much to the discomfiture of Edward Clare, who was surprised to see them looking so happy.
‘Does he think the storm has blown over?’ Edward said to himself. ‘Poor wretch. He will discover his mistake before long.’
The Vicar went to the Manor House after the evening service, and he and John Treverton were closeted together in the library for an hour or more, during which time John told his wife’s trustee all that had happened at Auray, and showed him documents which proved Marie Pomellec’s marriage with Jean Kergariou, and Kergariou’s death two years after her second marriage.
‘Providence has been very good to you, John Treverton,’ said the Vicar when he had heard everything. ‘You cannot be too grateful for your escape from disgrace and difficulty. But I hope you will always remember that your own sin is not lessened by this discovery. I hope that you honestly and truly repent that sin.’
‘Can I do otherwise?’ asked John Treverton sadly. ‘Has it not brought fear and sorrow upon one I love better than myself? The thing was done to benefit her, but I feel now that it was not the less dishonourable.’
‘Well, we will try to forget all about it,’ said the good-natured Vicar, who, in exhorting a sinner to repentance, never wished to make the burden of remorse too heavy. ‘I only desired that you should see your conduct in a proper light, as a Christian and a gentleman. God knows how grateful I am to Him for His mercy to you and my dear Laura. It would have almost broken my heart to see you turned out of this house.’
‘Like Adam and Eve out of Paradise,’ said Treverton, smiling, ‘and my poor Eve a sinless sufferer.’
After this serious talk the Vicar and his host went back to the drawing-room, where Laura and Celia were sitting by a glorious wood fire reading Robertson’s sermons.
‘What a darling he was!’ cried Celia, with a gush. ‘And howdesperately in love with him I should have been if I had lived at Brighton in his time and heard him preach! His are the only sermons I can read without feeling bored. If that dear prosy old father of mine would only take a lesson——’
Her father’s entrance silenced her just as she was about to criticise his capabilities as a preacher. The Vicar went straight to Laura, and took both her hands in his hearty grasp.
‘My dear, dear girl,’ he said, ‘Providence has ordered all things well for you. You have no more trouble to fear!’
It was not till the next morning that Laura remembered her husband’s anxious tenant from Beechampton. Husband and wife were breakfasting togethertête-à-têtein the book-room at half-past seven, John Treverton dressed in his hunting gear, ready to start for a six-mile ride to the meet of staghounds among the pasture-clad hills. Celia, who did not consider that her obligations as a guest included early rising, was still luxuriating in morning dreams.
‘Oh, by-the-bye,’ exclaimed Laura, when she and her husband had talked about many things, ‘I quite forgot to tell you about your tenant at Beechampton. He is coming to see you at nine o’clock this morning. It is a rather important matter he wants to see you about, he says. He has been extremely anxious for your return.’
‘My tenant at Beechampton, dear?’ said John Treverton, with a puzzled air. ‘Who can that be? I have no property at Beechampton except ground rents, and Sampson collects those. I have nothing to do with the tenants.’
‘Yes, but this is something about drainage, and your tenant wants to see you. He said you were the ground landlord of some houses which he holds.’
John Treverton shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
‘Rather a bore,’ he said, ‘But if he is here at nine o’clock I don’t mind seeing him—I shan’t wait for him. I’ve ordered my horse at nine sharp. And I’ve ordered the pony carriage for you and Celia to drive to the meet. It’s a fine morning, and the fresh air will do you good.’
‘Then I’d better send a message to Celia,’ said Laura. ‘She is given to late hours in wintry weather.’
She rang the bell and told Trimmer to send one of the maids to Miss Clare to say that she was to be ready for a drive at nine o’clock; and then John and his wife dawdled over their talk and breakfast till half-past eight, by which time the January sun was bright enough to invite them into the garden.
‘Run and put on your sealskin, Laura, and come for a turn in the grounds,’ said Mr. Treverton.
The obedient wife departed, and came back in five minutes, in a brown cloth dress, with jacket, hat, and muff of darkest sealskin.
‘What a delightful study in brown!’ said John.
They went out into the Dutch garden—that garden where John Treverton had walked alone on the morning after his first arrival at Hazlehurst—the garden where he had seen Laura standing under the yew-tree arch, in the glad April sunshine. They passed under the arch to-day, and made the circuit of the orchard, and speculated as to how long it would be before the primroses would brighten the grassy banks, and the wild purple crocuses break through the sod, like imprisoned souls rising from a wintry grave. Never had they been happier together—perhaps never so happy, for John Treverton’s mind was no longer burdened with the secret of an unhappy past. To-day it seemed to both as if there was not a cloud on their horizon. They strolled about orchard and garden until the church clock struck nine, and then John went straight to the hall door, where his handsome bay stood waiting for him, and where Laura’s ponies were rattling their bits, and shaking their pretty little thoroughbred heads, in a general impatience to be doing something, were it only running away with the light basket carriage to which they were harnessed.
‘Oh, there is your tenant,’ said Laura, as she and her husband came round the gravel drive from the adjacent garden, ‘standing at the hall door waiting for you.’
‘Is that he?’ exclaimed Treverton. ‘He looks uncommonly like a Londoner.—Well, my good fellow,’ he began, going up to the man, hunting-crop in hand, ready to mount his horse, ‘what is your business with me? Please make it as short as you can, for I’ve six miles to ride before I begin my day’s work.’
‘I shall be very brief, Mr. Treverton,’ answered the stranger, coming close up to the master of Hazlehurst Manor, and speaking in a low and serious tone, ‘for I want to catch the up train at 11.30, and I must take you with me. I’m a police officer from Scotland Yard, and I am here to arrest you on suspicion of having murdered your wife, known as Mademoiselle Chicot, at Cibber Street, Leicester Square, on the 19th of February, 187—.’
John Treverton turned deadly pale, but he faced the man without flinching.
‘I’ll come with you immediately,’ he said; ‘but you can do me one favour. Don’t let my wife know the nature of the business that takes me to London. I can get it broken to her gently after I am gone.’
‘Don’t you think you’d better tell her yourself?’ suggested the detective, in a friendly tone. ‘She’ll take it better from you than from any one else. I’ve always found it so. Tell her the truth, and let her come to London with us, if she likes.’
‘You are right,’ said Treverton; ‘she’ll be happier near me than eating her heart out down here. You’ve got some one withyou, I suppose. You didn’t reckon upon taking me single-handed?’
‘I didn’t reckon upon your making any resistance. You’re too much a gentleman and a man of the world. I’ve no doubt you can clear yourself when you come before a magistrate, and that the business will go no further. It was your being absent from the inquest, you know, that made things look bad against you.’
‘Yes, that was a mistake,’ answered Treverton.
‘I’ve got a man inside,’ said the detective. ‘If you’ll step into the parlour, and have it out with your wife, he can wait in the hall. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind ordering a trap of some kind to take us to the station. It might look better for you to go in your own trap.’
‘Yes, I’ll see to it,’ assented John Treverton absently. ‘Answer me one question, there’s a good fellow. Who set Scotland Yard on my heels? Who put you up to the fact that I am the man who called himself Chicot?’
‘Never you mind how we got at that, sir,’ replied the detective sagely. ‘That’s a kind of thing we never tell. We got the straight tip; that’s all you need know. It don’t make no difference to you how we got it, does it, now?’
‘Yes,’ said John Treverton, ‘it makes a great difference. But I dare say I shall know all about it before long.’